


Life is a Balance of Letting Go and Holding On (Rumi)

by AliceSloane13



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Bisexual, F/F, F/M, Lesbian, Mostly fluff for now, f/f - Freeform, f/m - Freeform, i don't know what i'm doing any more than you do, mff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 04:24:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18771136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceSloane13/pseuds/AliceSloane13
Summary: “Do you remember your rant to me about the three little bears?” he asks.“Um, no. I do remember when I took time out of my day to use a well-crafted analogy about circumstellar habitable zones to convince you to get your head in the game, but please continue with your children’s story.”* * *Will may not know what he's talking about, but he does know what he's doing. Sort of. Assuming Mackenzie doesn't kill him first.





	Life is a Balance of Letting Go and Holding On (Rumi)

**Author's Note:**

> “We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”  
> ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

 

“Hey, sis,” Will says, coming into Sloan’s office and promptly looking at everything in her office except her. His tone falls somewhere between awkward and questioning. Something neither of them are overly familiar with.

That’s how she knows this is about Mackenzie. And if he’s here asking her things as opposed to Mac coming through that door to complain…

Rolling her eyes, she walks over to where he’s standing–back to her–and snatches the book out of his hand and puts it back on the shelf. “What’d you do?” she asks, punching him in the arm in warning.

“Why do you assume...?” He stops himself out of reflex. Sitting down he huffs in frustration. He starts playing with things on her desk, but before she can stop him, he settles on a pen. “It’s not what I did,” he admits. “It’s what I didn’t do–couldn’t do.”

Sloan raises an eyebrow at him as she sits back down. “Yeah, buddy, I think you need to see a doctor, not me.”

“Not that,” Will says, tossing the pen he’s been fidgeting with at her.

“Anger management?” she suggests, deftly catching the pen and flicking it right back at him. He lets it fall in his lap and just stares at it. “Come on, what’s really going on?” She looks confused. “You guys didn’t fight, right? Because normally it’s Kenzie that’s busting down my door.”

“She’s always hated that you know,” he says with a smile.

“Hated what?”

“Kenzie,” he says. “She always hated when people called her that. Felt like they didn’t take her seriously.”

Sloan smiles. “She doesn’t hate it when I call her that.” She hesitates briefly. Does she? Sloan’s social skills aren’t always up to standard, but she thinks she’d notice that at least.

“She doesn’t,” Will reassures her. “She cares about you a lot.”

“And, I care about her a lot,” Sloan says, still having no idea where this conversation is headed. “So, you didn’t fight. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re not having problems in the bedro-” she stops short when he points at her.

“That’s the one.”

“Will, I don’t know if I’m the best person to be talking to about this. You know I love you guys, but…”

“Do you remember your rant to me about the three little bears?” he asks.

“Um, no. I do remember when I took time out of my day to use a well-crafted analogy about circumstellar habitable zones to convince you to get your head in the game, but please continue with your children’s story.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Will says, not really listening to her brag about herself. “That’s the problem.”

“I don’t follow. You gotta give me more than that, man.” She holds up her hands in question and shakes her head. He really sucks at communication when it comes to personal stuff.

“She’s, just right.”

“Yup,” Sloan said, agreeing with him. “She is. She’s also a little crazy, but it’s one of her best qualities.”

Will puts his elbows on her desk and covers his face in frustration. He looks back up at her and sighs. “And I’m not.”

Shaking her head, Sloan says his name. He and Mac are perfect together. She hasn’t seen her best friend this happy since the entire time she’s known her. Which granted hasn’t been very long, but it has been a lot of happy once they’d finally gotten things settled between them.

“Hear me out.” He starts fidgeting with the pen again and opens his mouth a couple times before he finds the right words to continue. “We need Baby Bear.” Well, they weren’t the right words, but they were words.

Sloan sighs heavily. “I’m just going to assume that you’re going to keep talking until either this makes sense or I call a hospital.”

“Mac,” he says, trying to figure this all out. “She’s Goldilocks right. Like you said?”

“I was talking about planets, and you’re talking about bears, but continue.” Her amusement is obvious.

“Whatever. Okay, so Mac needs things to be just right.”

“And they’re not?” Sloan asks cautiously.

Will shakes his head. “Not completely.” Sloan doesn’t say anything, so he continues. “I’m Mama Bear.”

Sloan tries not to laugh. She really does. She can see he is in distress, but it can’t be helped. She quickly quiets as he glares at her though.

“She needs Baby Bear,” he explains.

“You think she wants kids?” Sloan asks cautiously.

“What? No. Well, maybe. I don’t know, but that’s not the issue right now.”

“Then what is? I can’t help you unless you start making sense.”

“I need you to be Papa Bear,” he explains. Staring at her and waiting for her to put the pieces together. “Then we’ll have Baby Bear."

“Okay first, this conversation is giving me a headache. Second, for the sake of this stupid analogy technically wouldn’t you be Papa Bear? Lastly, I still have no fucking clue what you’re talking about, so either make sense, or I’m calling Kenzie.”

“I’m too soft,” he finally says. “She wants things that... I just...” he sighs. “Has she ever told you about my family?”

Sloan leans back in her chair and shakes her head. “Not really, just that you have a brother and three sisters and weren’t close with your dad.” She goes ahead and counts herself because he’s in her fucking office and making her insane as much as her brother’s ever have.

Will nods. “My father was a very abusive man. Especially towards women.” He watches Sloan for a reaction, but she gives him none. She’s just waiting patiently for him to continue. “I spent a lot of time making sure that everyone stayed safe.”

Sloan tilts her head to the side, feeling a whole new level of affection stirring. Despite all his snarkiness and bravado, she always knew he was a good guy. She knew Mac wouldn’t love him if he weren’t, and he’d been a good friend to her.

“There are times when things get rough for her. She’s too stressed. The news hits too close to home. Or just the mood she’s in. Lots of reasons,” he explains. It’s weird talking about his sex life to anyone, but Sloan truly feels like the person he’d open up to more than anyone else. Even if he wasn’t about to ask her something crazy.

“So, she gets burnt out and wants something to take the edge off?” Sloan asks. “Something a little more… physically intense than usual?”

“Exactly,” Will says waving his hand in her direction implicating that she’s got it.

Sloan nods. “Okay, and you have trouble giving her that because even though you know she wants that. Your past…”

“I just can’t. I’ve tried, and I just… I need a way to fix this. To give her that.”

Sloan reaches across the desk and grabs his hand. “I get it.” She may not have been through trauma like either of them have, but she understands. There are times when Mac needs something Will can’t give her. Neither of them should, but put in an uncomfortable position.

“I end up feeling horrible. She ends up feeling guilty…” he continues to explain. “That’s why I came to you.”

“God, Will, I mean I get it, but I don’t know if I have any more of an idea of what to do than you do.”

“Oh, I’m not here for ideas,” Will says, sitting up in his chair in surprise. “I thought you already figured that out.”

“Figured what out?”

“I want you to...” he gestures vaguely. “Take care of her when I can’t.”

“You want me to what now?” Sloan asks in shock. She was following the line of conversation, but to hear him actually say it...

Oh, what the hell, he thinks. “I want you to fu-”

“Do not finish that sentence, Will,” Sloan says, pointing at him and shaking her head.

Will smiles weakly. “She trusts you. She loves you.”

“And I love her, but Will have you even talked to her about _any_ of this? I don’t even mean your insane plan. I mean about what’s going on between you guys.”

He nods. “Yes. We’ve talked. Of course, we’ve talked.”

“And?”

“And, she says there’s nothing to worry about, and it’s fine.”

“So, maybe you should listen to her,” Sloan suggests.

Will shakes his head and looks out the window. “No. She’s not okay,” he says. “She’s barely eating. She’s barely sleeping. When she does sleep, she’s waking up screaming and crying.”

“That sounds more like she needs to talk to someone and not like she needs another person in her bed.”

“She’s been seeing a therapist for weeks. She’s on the meds she’s supposed to be taking... for the most part.” He sees Sloan’s question before she can ask. “A lot of them make her feel foggy so she only takes them when she’s at her breaking point.”

“Well, why don’t I just talk to her? Maybe take her to the spa for a weekend or something,” Sloan suggests.

Will gives her a knowing look. “You know damn well that while she’d enjoy herself, she wouldn’t admit to anything being wrong.”

“So, your suggestion is what... I just show up to your place one night and have sex with her?”

Will laughs. “Well, I wouldn’t put it exactly like... Actually yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

“Will! That’s insane. And you can’t go around having this conversation without her.” She wants to strangle him. This is the most bizarre thing she’s ever heard from him, and that’s saying a lot.

“I know. I know,” he rubs his hand down his face and looks out the glass doors towards the bullpen. Mac is down there moving from desk to desk, despite knowing damn well that her staff knows what they were doing.

Sloan tries not to think about what he’s implying. Tries not to think about Mac in bed. Tries to not think about what she would sound like. Snapping herself out of it, she scrunches up her eyebrows and tries to look at this more logically. “What even makes you think that I can give that to her?”

“You’re good at tough love,” he says with an offhanded shrug. Knowing that she needs something more solid than a flippant comment he nods. “You two already have a bond,” before she can interrupt he holds up his hand. “Maybe not a sexual one, but there’s trust and love and all that.”

“I’m with you so far, but the… edgier bits? Why me?” she asks, not quite sure about the specifics.

“Instinct? Desperation? Trust? I don’t know,” he says. “You just seem like you’d be good at it.”

“How… rough? are we talking?” she asks. She isn’t completely opposed to the idea. Ravishing Mac would be easy for her, or for most people, but she can see why Will struggles. That has nothing to do with Mackenzie.

“Nothing over the top,” he assures. “I’m not expecting you to go all full dominatrix on her.” They both laugh. “Just pushing her limits a little. Get her out of her own head.” He honestly doesn’t know how far Mackenzie would let them take her. How much she needs. He can understand Sloan’s hesitation. “If you don’t want to do this, that’s totally fine. I didn’t come here to pressure you.”

“It’s not that,” Sloan says, a little too quickly. She tries to ignore the blush rising to her cheeks. She ignores his smirk. “I just think there’s a lot of variables we _all_ need to talk about before we even get anywhere close to having that conversation.”

“I know,” he says defensively. “I just wanted to talk to you and see how you felt before I brought it up to her. She’d be mortified.”

“Pretty sure she’s still going to be,” Sloan agrees. “And there’s a high probability that she is going to kill us both when she finds out we even had this conversation.”

“She doesn’t have to find out,” Will says defensively. He sees the look Sloan is giving him and concedes. “Okay. You’re right. She’s absolutely going to find out.”

“She always does,” Sloan says. “I don’t know how she knows half the things she does, but it’s scary.”

“I have my ways,” Mac says from the doorway with a suspicious look on her face. “Now, tell me why I’m going to kill you both?”

“How did you even get in here?” Will asks, unsure how they both could have missed that.

Mac rolls her eyes and leans against the edge of Sloan’s desk and crosses her arms. “I’m crafty–and planning your murders. Now tell me why.”

Sloan bites her lip and looks to Will. This was not the time or the place. He looks as lost as she does. It’s not a good combination. “We were going to surprise you,” Sloan says in a panic. She forces a smile and excitement onto her face.

“Surprise me? With what?” Mac asks amused.

“Tell her will,” Sloan says, snapping her head to look at Will. She doesn’t want him to tell the truth, but she needs him to think of something convincing because she’s got nothing.

“Sloan wants to take you to the spa for the weekend,” he answers quickly. “Shopping, wine, all the girly things you two get up to.”

“Aww, Sloan,” Mac says, her face melting into something sweet and adoring.

“But first, Will wants to take you to dinner tonight,” Sloan says, throwing the ball back in his court. She is not going to be trapped alone all weekend with this floating around between them all. Even if Mac doesn’t know yet.

“Well, I thought all three of us could have dinner,” he says, finally figuring out where to take this. It might not be the romantic dinner Mac had just pictured, but she was the one always wanting to drag Sloan around with them.

“Okay,” Mac nods happily, albeit slightly confused. She’s more than happy to have Sloan tag along, but she’s used to Will wanting her to himself especially if she’s going away for a few days.

Both Sloan and Will make quick work of gathering their things and making excuses of where they need to be before Mac can ask any more questions.

Mac watches them both scatter with a dopey smile on her face until her mind catches up. “Wait, why would I want to kill either of you...” she says more to herself than them.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far then hopefully that means you didn't stick around just to yell at me about how ooc this is. I've watched the show once and while I have ideas this wasn't where I meant to start. It just happened. There's not a lot of build-up and I wrote it kind of rushed. I know that makes it worse. 
> 
> Also, I usually don't write in present tense so there's a pretty good chance I might have switched tenses and not caught it. Please let me know if you spot any typos or errors. And of course, I'm always looking for feedback. Always! 
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to read. I hope it was at least a little enjoyable.


End file.
